#1. Let’s Get Ready To Rumble!

“The aunts fight. I mean like literally fight. They will get wasted and just get louder and louder and then one will shout something along the lines of, “You want to back that up?” and then they will go outside and fight. We all watch and cheer for our favorite aunt to win and sometimes we will even video tape the fight so that we can watch it later and laugh about it. It is pretty normal.”

#2. Turtle Power

“Every year on Christmas before we could open anything my dad used to make us do the Ninja Turtles Dance. He would take lead and my sister and I would have to do it behind him while my mom recorded it. Thinking back I find it hilarious.”

#3. Sacred Cow

“My mother has always put a cow puppet on top of the Christmas tree instead of an angel.”

#4. The Last Fry

“It’s more between my brother and I than our whole family. Whenever we’d eat at a fast food place we would play “The last fry”, and it was just that, the one that ate the last fry won. Sometimes we’d hide it for hours then eat it and say “MMMM IT TASTE SOOOO GOOD WHEN ITS THE LAAAAAST FRY!!!” One time I put my fry in my backpack and found it a couple weeks later, totally won that time.”

#5. Pour One Out For The Hommies

“In my family, we go to the graveyard on Christmas Eve and pour the dead relatives favorite drinks on their gravestones. I am from Denmark.”

#6. Brain Freeze

“When I was a kid, the aunts and uncles would get all the kids a gallon of their favorite ice cream on the 4th of July. They would sit us down at a table and give us all our ice cream at the same time. Here’s the fun part. The first kid to tackle the entire gallon of ice cream got $5. This always lead to all of us kids eating ice cream very quickly, and thus getting brain freeze (ice cream headache). Within minutes there are a half dozen children roaming the backyard clutching at their sinuses in pain while adults laugh at them. I’m so glad I finally caught on.”

#7. Slap Dat Turkey

“Whenever we make a turkey or goose for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have to slap it. I don’t know why. The slapping takes place when the turkey is in the roasting pan, you just slap it with moderate force, about the force you would use to slap a fly or mosquito on your leg. Whenever I asked my Grandmom, she would sing “it’s tradition!” and never answer the question beyond that.”

#8. The Potato

“Whenever anyone of us has to take an exam, they take a single uncooked potato with them. This has been tradition ever since my Grampa found one in his pocket after acing his driving test. We’re not a particularly superstitious family otherwise, but The Potato has proven itself indispensable.”

#9. Oh, He Died

“My sister accidentally started a tradition when she was a kid. She wandered into my parent’s room one evening after watching TV and asked them, “Who is John Belushi?” I think she was 8 or 9 at the time. My parents, who were big fans, told her who he was and then asked her why she wanted to know. Her response was “oh, he died” and she wandered out of their room. She did the same thing about a week later with another celebrity and my parents, having forgotten about how she asked about John Belushi reponded the same way, explaining who the celebrity was and then asking why and got the same response from my sister “oh, he died”. Now whenever there is a celebrity death, everyone in my family and several family friends rush to call/text someone else in the family so they can be the first person to report it and the call/text always starts with “Who is ___?!” and usually the other person responds with “oh no, how did they die?!” The person who manages to tell someone else first usually is referred to as “winning” that round. We’re a little morbid.”

#10. Stealin With Grandma

“My grandma used to take us “junkin”. As an adult I realized what we were doing is stealing from the Salvation Army.”

#11. Personal Space Heaters

“Hound stealin’. It’s close to sacrilege in our family, but that doesn’t stop us. Our dogs (two whippets and a Treeing Walker coon hound) sleep in our beds with us, and on cold winter nights we’ll sometimes sneak into each other’s rooms and steal a dog out from under the covers and carry them to our own beds. By sometimes I mean every single night.”

#12. ’Twas The Night Before Christmas

“You can open one present on Christmas Eve, but its chosen by your siblings. Leading to lots of under the table negotiations, and the eventual selection of the smallest or least interesting looking present. If you were really pissed off, you chose a card to be opened. Lots of fights were had.”

#13. Pube Cake

“My brother, who is 1 yr older than me, was in the bathroom one time. He was in grade 5 at the time I believe. So he’s just in there doing his business when all of a sudden…, “MOM MOM MOM!!” He storms out of the bathroom straight into my parents all excited. He tells her that he has a hair growing above his grade 5 chode. She says that she doesn’t believe him, that he’s far too young. Although embarrassed at first, he proceeds to pull his pants down and reveal.. which indeed.. is his first strand of pube. My mom then gets all excited and calls my dad who is at work, who also gets very excited. She tells him to bring cake to celebrate this monumental moment. I was in the other room on the computer just hearing all this happen. Again… I only really cared about the cake. 2 months later. I got a pube. Family rejoiced. Cake.”

#14. 6 Out Of 10

“Not my family, but my ex-girlfriend who is Ukrainian (this fact is important to the story) has really weird family traditions. When she was in elementary school her dad used to wake her and her brother up 2 hours before school everyday. Then he would put on a cassette tape of Ukranian folk songs and they would take turns singing. When one of them finished a song he would hold up a card with a number between 1 and 10 written on it to rate their performance. Still cracks me up when I think about it. Her family did a lot of weird things.”

#15. SHOTS!

“My great grandma used to do body shots off of babies. Whenever a family member would come over with their baby, my great grandma would check to see if the soft spot on their head had closed up. If it hadn’t, she’d put tequila on the soft spot and suck it off of our heads. She did it apparently to close the hole faster, because evil spirits come in from that hole and she believed that it took them out. Some of my aunts still do this.”

#16. Run Away Cake

“On Easter we used to eat a bunny cake with only one ear, because my Uncle ran away once as a little kid, and he took the ear with him. He came back a few hours later when everyone was looking for him having already eaten the ear.”

#17. Alice’s Restaurant

“Every year, our Thanksgiving consists of all the neighborhood strays, usually around 25 people. The food is glorious and wine is plentiful. When everyone is seated for dinner, my dad does a toast and then turns on the song Alice’s Restaurant. Our entire family and regular guests sing the song as it’s being played. The newcomers are usually a little mortified and stunned that A) 20 people are singing the same song around the dinner table. B) we know ALL the words C) the song is so damn long. I’ve grown to love this tradition.”

#18. The Wolf Pack

“My brother-in-law thought the “three wolf moon” shirts were hilarious so he bought one. My husband also thought it was funny so he bought one with more wolves on it (to up the ante). My sister and I then bought a wolf shirt for my dad so he could fit in with the guys. They wear these shirts in public when they are all together and call themselves the “wolf pack.” My parents even named their boat “three wolf moon.” My sister and I are both due to have little boys this winter. We are on the hunt for wolf onsies…”